Fabricators of ceramic products often wish to transfer images onto such substrates. For example, glass manufacturers may wish to transfer a particular image into a glass substrate. Methods such as silk screening have been developed to transfer non-digital images onto such substrates, but the silk screen inherently limits the types of images that can be transferred. A particular screen must be made for each image, thus altering the image is difficult and costly to the fabricator. One solution to such a problem is the use of decals to transfer digital images to ceramic substrates.
Such decals are known to those skilled in the art. Reference may be had to U.S. Pat. No. 3,489,587 to Weingrad (Ceramic Decalcomanias); U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,549,446 and 3,554,834 both to Bennett (Decal Applying); U.S. Pat. No. 3,658,611 to Gray (Process for Decorating a Glass Surface); U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,772,049; 3,860,471; 3,870,536; 3,898,362; and 3,956,558 all to Blanco (Ceramic Decalcomania and the like); U.S. Pat. No. 3,894,167 to Kluge (Decalcomania for decorating ceramic ware); U.S. Pat. No. 4,068,033 to Meade (Heat-releasable decalcomanias and adhesive composition therefore); U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,292,104 and 4,322,467 both to Heimbach (Decalcomania manufacture and Decalcomania); U.S. Pat. No. 5,712,021 to Hernandez (Decals for all occasions); U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,036,809; 6,143,117; and 6,183,588 all to Kelly (Process for releasing a thin-film structure from a substrate, Process for transferring a thin-film structure to a temporary carrier; Process for transferring a thin-film structure to a substrate); U.S. Pat. No. 6,504,559 to Newton (Digital Thermal Printing Process); U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,504,559 and 6,722,271 both to Geddes (Ceramic Decal Assembly). The content of each of the aforementioned patents is hereby incorporated by reference into this specification.
The prior art fails to provide a digital decal which can be easily placed upon a ceramic substrate and selectively adhered to the substrate by heat activation.
It is an object of this invention to provide a heat activatable decal that transfers a digital image onto a ceramic substrate.